“I bet you did,” Ivan mutters, looking down with a cold expression. In one move he pulls the back of the chair up, and Leader Allen sprawls on the floor.
Fear flashes across Leader Allen’s face, although he tries to mask it. He’s collapsed, feet slipping uselessly against the whitewashed floors. Then his expression turns hard, a gleaming light in his rheumy eyes. “I don’t have much time left anyway. Pancreatic cancer. If you kill me, it will only make me a martyr.”
“Maybe you don’t care about your own life,” Ivan says, “but I’m sure you care about your flock.”
Leader Allen laughs. “Take them then. Kill them. Fuck them.”
I hear a small gasp from behind me, and faintly, I realize that Sarah Elizabeth is still outside the door.
Ivan seems to consider this. Even from across the room, I can see when he comes to the conclusion that Leader Allen is telling the truth—that he’s dying soon. That he doesn’t care about the people here. Which means Ivan doesn’t have any leverage for making him stop.
The decision comes to him suddenly, swiftly. He pulls his gun from the holster, and I gasp.
“No,” I whisper. I promised not to speak, but I can’t stand here and watch this. “He…he couldn’t have. Look at him. He can’t get up.”
“Then he sent someone.” Ivan’s expression doesn’t soften. If anything, he seems to grow right in front of my eyes. I always thought Leader Allen was godlike, but Ivan looks terrifying and all-powerful. “I don’t give a fuck how he managed to do it. In fact I don’t really care if he did. He hurt you. That’s more than enough reason to kill him.”
Something inside me withers at his words. I told him that Leader Allen looked at me, spoke inappropriate words to me, groomed me, but I never told him he touched me too.
I never wanted him to know.
The knot in my throat makes it hard to speak. “How did you—”
“I suspected when you first told me what happened. I knew for sure when I saw the way he looks at you. And the way you look at him.”
My gaze snaps to Leader Allen. How am I looking at him? With disgust? With fear? Both of those, but I suspect there’s something else in my eyes. Something that Ivan knows very well—worship. The lessons were too well taught, too deeply carved in my soul to be completely forgotten. Even if I’ve learned to hate him, there’s a part of me that will always revere him.
The sound of a gun being cocked slices through me. It’s not Ivan’s gun. It came from behind me.
I whirl to see Sarah Elizabeth holding a rifle. My heart nearly stops. She’s pointing it toward Ivan. I didn’t think she had it in her—didn’t think she would even know how to use a rifle—but then maybe protecting her leader has given her courage. I’m not sure if she’ll hit him. A gun like that will have a big kick, and she looks too thin, too waiflike to even hold it up. But I can’t take the risk.
I’m the closest to her, only a couple feet away, and I calmly step in front of the rifle. “You don’t want to do this,” I tell her softly. “He’s not your enemy.”
Her eyes are wild, pupils so large I wonder if she’s on something. Even though that’s impossible. Drugs are for the outside world, not the purity of the hills. “I have to. This is my only chance. Move out of the way.”
She steps to the side to get a better shot—and that’s when I realize she isn’t pointing it at Ivan. She’s pointing it at Leader Allen. Oh God, suddenly it’s clear to me what Sarah Elizabeth is doing in this house. It’s clear who has had to take my mother’s place, since I wasn’t here to do it. My stomach rolls over.
“Sarah Elizabeth,” I whisper. “Don’t.” Not because I don’t want him dead. Whatever I’d felt for Leader Allen, lingering devotion or maybe just pity—it’s evaporated now, seeing the fear in this young woman’s eyes.
No, I don’t want her to shoot because she shouldn’t have to. It’s an act that would haunt her forever, even if Leader Allen deserves it. I know, because it would haunt me too. Our teachings run too deep. Ivan can shoot him. Or Luca. Hell, I’ll do it if it means sparing her one more second of pain, pain that should have been mine all along.
I push the barrel of the rifle aside so it’s pointing at the wall. Sarah Elizabeth’s eyes are wide, lower lip trembling.
A choked sound comes from behind me, and I turn in time to see Leader Allen stagger to his feet, clearly unbalanced but surging forward just the same. “That’s right, girl,” he says with a cold smile directed straight at me. “You wouldn’t kill your father, would you?”
I freeze in horror, every muscle seized tight. He doesn’t mean father like a priest. That isn’t what we ever called him. He was our leader. Leader Allen. And he’s my father… The memory of what he did to me, of his hands on me, sears my skin like a brand I’ll never be able to erase.
My gaze clashes with Ivan’s. In those pale gray eyes I see my anguish, my horror reflected back at me—along with something I’m too broken to feel in this moment. Rage.
Sarah Elizabeth moves from behind me, pushing forward.
Then Luca is there, holding her back. I hear a scuffling sound and shouting—then a gun goes off. I’m too frozen to move. Too shocked to even care if it’s gone through me. I can only stare in horror and fascination as Ivan pulls Leader Allen close and pumps three bullets into his stomach.
The older man slumps to the floor, already unconscious.
Already dead before his body collapses in a graceless heap.
My hands clap over my mouth, barely holding it in. Then I’m running, stumbling down the steps, racing out the door. I make it to the honeysuckle plants outside before I throw up, kneeling in the dirt as my body rejects anything and everything. I’m sick to my stomach, sick to my soul.
My mother knew. She must have known who he was to me. That must have been why she went with him. Even with his precious Harmony Hills, he’d found a young prostitute to fuck in the city. And when he’d knocked her up, he’d brought her and her small child to keep in his house—not as part of his family. As pretty little playthings.
My stomach heaves again, and I lean over the dirt, mouth open in shock and horror, but nothing is left inside me. I left them in that room. Ivan, Luca, Sarah Elizabeth. The dead body of Leader Allen. I can’t bring myself to think of him as my father.
Luca exits the house first, dragging a shrieking Sarah Elizabeth in his arms.
There’s blood seeping from his shirt, and I realize he’s been shot. It doesn’t seem to slow him down any or interfere with his strength. Sarah Elizabeth is fighting him off, but she’s losing. Even shot, he’s a powerful force. Why is he taking her? Where is he taking her? The questions float away, lost in the storm of my hatred, of my shame.
Ivan comes out next. He comes straight to me and helps me stand. He doesn’t say a word as we head back down the lane.
The first shot hits the dirt.
It takes me a second to realize what’s happening. Ivan realizes it sooner. He swings me into his arms as the second shot rings out and hits the ground, sending more dirt into the air. Oh God.
Luca still has Sarah Elizabeth with him, and the men from the other limos circle us, shooting back at the houses.
“No,” I scream. “There’s children.”
The worst part is those children might have guns. The women might too. They’re too brainwashed to do anything else. We’re demons, come to slay their mighty leader.
“Don’t shoot,” Ivan tells them as we reach the limos.
The men look angry but they shove us inside, and soon enough we’re heading back out.
The gate is closed when we make it back through—but the spikes are facing away from us, meant to keep cars out, not in. The first limo blasts through the gate at top speed. The next limo has Luca and Sarah Elizabeth, though I can’t see them. Ivan and I are in the last one.
We tear over the country roads for hours. For eternity.